


All my faces are alibis

by agirlnamedchuck



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (2012), Thor (Movies)
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, F/F, Female Thor, Gender Issues, Gender Roles, Genderswap, Re-write of Thor and Avengers with Girl!Thor, This doesn't stop her from becoming a badass warrior and king, Thor is girl, eventually
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-03-22
Updated: 2013-03-22
Packaged: 2017-12-06 02:39:54
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,475
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/730630
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/agirlnamedchuck/pseuds/agirlnamedchuck
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Thor is strong and stubborn and she thinks she could be a good king. Maybe even a great one. </p>
<p>Besides she'd never seen herself as queen anyways.</p>
            </blockquote>





	All my faces are alibis

i.

Asgard is old. Asgard is old by its people and its land. The lands of Asgard have existed since the beginning of time or long enough that no one, even the Allfather, all knowing, can remember when it first started. 

Naturally this trait passes over to its citizens. Once Thor witnessed a feud between two former friends that lasted for over a thousand years. It would have gone on longer as is their ways, but one party fell in battle. Thor expects that it’ll continue on when the other reaches his father’s halls. 

By contrast Thor at a mere four hundred years is pitifully young and still at an age where concerns such as feuds or time are only passing in comparison to pranks with Loki and wild ‘adventures’ with Fandral and Volstagg. 

Thor is young. This is what Odin will say to his counsel later. They will be infuriated but Odin is King. The Allfather is law. 

It’s Loki’s fault really, that causes Thor to decide to become king. She’ll appreciate the irony later and she’ll laugh because it feels easier than crying. 

They are each other’s closest companions and Thor would do anything for Loki who willingly uses this to his advantage. So when Loki suggests that they play hide and seek, Thor agrees easily. 

It takes her hours to find him because Loki is quiet and stealthy and even though Thor had made him promise not to, she knows he sometimes uses his magic because Loki hates to lose. 

Before she finds Loki she stumbles into the throne room by accident. It’s not the first time she’s been there but it is the first time when something interesting is actually going on. They don’t see her, thankfully, so she remains quiet and sits hidden, curious. 

It’s not a particularly big moment, if it had been anyone else who’d stepped into the throne room then she doubts it would have changed a single thing. But seeing the Allfather in front of a line of Asgard’s citizens, listening to what they said, as his counsel stood off to the side-- 

This Odin is different. Gone is the kind smile and joyful eyes. Gone is everything familiar to her, inquisitive eyes and a questioning mouth is all that is left and she watches. 

It should scare her or make her feel uneasy at the least but it doesn’t. In that moment seeing the Allfather rule Thor decides she wants to do that. She knows it’s hard, she knows that the King must make difficult decisions but Thor is strong and stubborn and she thinks she could be a good king. Maybe even a great one. 

Besides she’d never seen herself as queen anyways. 

ii.

It’s wrong! All wrong! 

Thor scowls at the mirror, face dark and drawn as she considers the scissors in her hand. She never should have listened to Loki. To be fair it had made sense at the time. A warrior couldn’t have long hair he’d said. What kind of warrior would she be? What kind of future King would she be if she was even more different? He’d reasoned and it had made sense the way Loki’s thoughts always made sense to her because there was no one she trusted more. 

Thank you she’d said and had gone away to think, leaving him to his books, and maybe that had been his intention, just something to get her away but that did not mean it wasn’t right or valid. 

She’d given it thought, for once not acting rash as she usually did but in the end it hadn’t taken her very long to decide. 

Women of Asgard did not cut their hair usually. It was a way to show their strength and health and many took pride in it though Thor did little more than hastily braid hers in the morning and only because it pleased Frigga when she did. 

They cut their hair only in times of great sorrow, the loss of a king, the death of a loved one, never for anything less and even then it was just a way to show honor. 

Women of Asgard did not cut their hair but warriors did and Thor was determined to be a future warrior, the way all the kings of past had been. 

So she’d gotten scissors from a drawer and had sat down in front of the mirror and started. Only it had been more difficult then she thought and half of her hair was uneven and though she didn’t care what it looked like she knew her parents would. 

A door creaks open from somewhere behind her and she is half tempted to hide but mostly she is frustrated and resigned. 

“Thor?” Her mother says and Thor sighs, it could be worse, it could be Odin. No, it could be Loki. 

“In here.” She calls and waits. 

Frigga is dressed beautifully, the way she always is. Bright and regal and eternally lovely and whatever Thor pictures when she imagines a queen. She’d tried once, desperately to image herself like that, some unknown figure standing by her side while she looked bright (fragile) and beautiful (passive) and queen-like and she’d had to stop because she couldn’t, no matter how hard she tried. 

She had accepted a long time ago that she would never be that person. It wasn’t the fate for her. 

“You’ve made a mess I see.” her mother says, though not unkindly. The queen sits down next to her and runs a gentle hand through her half shorn hair, detangling it. 

Once it had been long, blonde and beautiful and pooling down to her waist. 

Thor hated it.

She cared little about maintaining it and she hated how tangled it got from going on adventures. Now it was a little past her chin on one side and shoulder length on the other, in some places it was even longer or shorter. 

Thor relaxes suddenly very tired and leans her head against Frigga’s shoulder. Her mother hums, “What my darling, am I going to do with you?”

“Throw me to the frost giants?” Thor suggests and Frigga pretends to consider it and then shakes her head, smiling. 

“Nay, I can’t do that. You’re far too tiny for a suitable meal, I fear they’d throw you right back and then what would I do?” Frigga lets out a dramatic sigh and Thor smiles even though she doesn’t want to. 

“Put me in the dungeon for a hundred years?” She and Loki had done this long ago. They’d gotten in much more trouble in their younger years and when Frigga asked what punishment they should receive they’d always chime in with suggestion after suggestion, each more ridiculous then the last until they were laughing so hard that they couldn’t think of anything else. 

“And waste valuable dungeon space? I think not.” Frigga scoffs. 

Thor stares up at her and the Allmother looks down at her, humor fading away as she reaches out to touch Thor’s hair again. “I guess, I’ll have to keep you.” she says at last, softly and something tight in Thor’s chest relaxes at her words even though she knows her mother was kidding all along, that Frigga would never give her away. 

Frigga helps her finish cutting her hair and when it is done she brushes out any remaining tangles and Thor cannot stop touching it, running her hands over the short ends and smiles to herself, thinking that this feels right. 

“You look beautiful.” Frigga says just before she leaves. “My little warrior.” 

iii.

She knows no one understands it, not even Loki or Frigga the ones who she willingly and freely shares her secrets with, the ones who know her best. They try which is more than what she can say for many. 

But still like the rest of Asgard, they do not understand. 

Thor wants to be King because that is who she is meant to be. She dreams of it or she is kept awake at night by her fears and worries and excitement because she knows this is what the Norns have chosen for her as easily as she knows her eyes are blue and hair blonde. 

These are the things she is sure of: Loki is her brother and dearest friend, Thor is a good person, and one day she will be King and Loki will stand by her side and Asgard will be more prosperous and grand than any other time. (later, centuries in fact, she will think about this list of sure things and wonder if any of them were meant to be true.)

They don’t understand because they are trapped by Asgard’s traditions, they are hesitant because of her age and because of her gender. 

But oh, if they could see it her way! 

She’s never told anyone this but she can feel Asgard. She’s not Seior, not like her gifted and outcast of a brother, but she knows she can feel it. She can feel the very being of Asgard in the ground she walks on, the vibrations rumbling through her feet until it reaches her head, she can feel it in the air she breathes in. 

Thor can feel Asgard curled in the construct of her bones, she can feel it buried deep underneath her skin, resting, waiting, and sometimes late at night she will look in a mirror and spend minutes--hours searching for a sign of it, some proof she can show the rest of the world. 

Sometimes she will still, for once content with a patience no one is quite sure she posses and she will sit in some quiet place and just listen to Asgard speak to her. Sometimes it sounds like a lullaby, maybe some tune Frigga sang once again, others it sounds like the songs they place when there’s feasts and festivals. 

Sometimes it sounds like a war cry. 

If she told Loki any of this then he’d laugh at her. 

It takes Thor another two hundred years before she meet someone who understands. 

The girl in the ring with Master Vili, she’s going through the training that Thor recognizes from just a few months ago. Her hair is cut shorter than what would be acceptable for a woman, but if she is in the ring with Master Vili, then she is also a warrior and her shoulder-length hair is just fine. Her eyes are fierce and determined even as Master Vili drills her harder and harder. (Thor’s muscles ache in sympathy)

Thor is stunned. 

This is the first girl that she’s seen within the training halls. 

“Her name is Sif.” Hogun tells her quietly, though she cannot remember a time when Hogun was anything but. “She started training almost three months ago.”

She and the ‘Warriors’ three are sitting on the seated-ring that surrounds the training grounds, waiting impatiently for their lesson to begin. They’re little more than amateurs though she is confident that they’ll be great warriors in no time. 

Volstagg looks over at Fandral’s considering face and laughs loudly. “Don’t even think of it, she won’t give you the time of day.” They’ve been fighting lately over the affections of some kitchen girl who is admittedly lovely. At first it was amusing, but now she and Hogun are quickly growing tired of the traded insults and not so subtle barbs. Last week they’d been on an adventure and Volstagg had been almost killed by a raging Hraebronir coming up behind him--it had only been Hogun’s quick thinking that allowed him to keep his head. 

Fandral frowns and Thor steps in, smiling jovially. “I am sure my friend, that your many charms could persuade her.” 

Volstagg snorts. 

Fandral glares at him and it looks like another repeat as the two step closer, tension rising in the air and Hogun sighs as Thor hides a grin--“Oi! You four!” A sharp voice calls and all of them jump. 

Master Vili stares up at them a familiar scowl on his face, the dark-haired girl--Sif, stands next to him though when she catches them looking she stiffens and her face becomes blank. 

Volstagg nudges Fandral who nudges Hogun who merely looks at Thor and at last she steps forward, “Yes Sir?” 

“Come down here this instant.” Fandral or maybe Volstagg snickers as Thor flushes and she glares at them as she heads down the stairs. If she gets in trouble for their mischief then she’ll have Loki enact revenge (a few days without hair wouldn’t harm anyone least of all them.) 

Master Vili is still frowning when she gets down there but Thor is a future warrior and a future king and she looks her teacher in the eyes and does not think about how this is the third time she’ll be in trouble this week. It’s not her fault, not technically. When she first started to train there was an up-cry because she was what she was and who she was and many said it was because she was the Allfather’s daughter and not because of her own merit. Master Vili squashes those concerns by working Thor harder than the others and yes punishing her more severely than the others. 

“Since you’re wasting valuable time chattering you can make up for it by fighting Sif.” 

Thor glances over at her; she is at least five inches shorter and so skinny that she almost thinks she can see ribs. In a way Sif reminds her of Loki who’s been constantly rail thin as long as she can remember. 

“You want me to fight her?” Thor says confused because she’s been training for years and Sif for only a few months. 

Master Vili smiles but there is something to it that she doesn’t fully understand. “Yes, begin on my count.”

He counts to three and for a second the girls just stare at each other before Thor starts, lunging forward and shifting all of her weight into the first blow. The fight lasts for half an hour and by the end of it they are both bloody and bruised. Master Villi, though in Thor’s opinion this isn’t too surprising; Thor’s spent years training to fight men and beasts, she’s spent years learning to fight things that are usually bigger and heavier than her. 

Sif is neither of those things, though she is a good fighter nonetheless. She can easily see Sif becoming a good warrior, a great one even. 

They lay on the ground as the warriors three slink down to greet them and she is sure that they are saying something but her ears are ringing and there is a manic grin on her face. Thor thinks it over and then turns to face Sif who by now has gotten up, wobbly on her legs. 

“You should come to lunch with us.” She says, a bruise blooming fiercely on her cheek and pain in her ribs and she has never felt more alive then she does when for the first time Sif cracks a small smile at her and nods. 

iv. 

Thor is an adult when she picks up Mjolnir for the first time. She feels like a child, spine painfully tense as she stares down at the hammer, she thinks she can hear her heart beating too quickly. 

She hopes no one else can. 

What if she can’t do this? What if she really is unworthy? What if? What if?

The entire court is watching her (waiting for her to fail like always because even though she is beloved, even though she has become a fearsome warrior and pledged her loyalty, her life to Asgard and its King, she is still a woman, she is still wrong.) 

and Thor cannot think, cannot move. For the first time in her life, her actions, her stubborn attitude have failed her and she is painfully stunned in place by the bonds of insecurity and fear. 

Sif and the Warriors three are somewhere in the hall and she tries to take solace in that, knowing that they won’t desert her even if she can’t wield the hammer. She tries but she fails. 

“Thor.” a voice as familiar as her own says softly and instinctively she glances over to her right side for a second and Loki is still standing there, looking ahead at where the Allfather sits as if he’d never spoken at all. 

She stares at him for a second and then suddenly her heart stops beating too fast and her spine relaxes because Loki is one of the cleverest men she knew and if he thought she was worthy then she was. She’d never known him to be wrong about something so important because Loki didn’t make mistakes like that. 

She nods at him and then steels herself and for one moment lets herself believe she is worthy--

She still closes her eyes, because there is still that doubt, because she has learned to live with that doubt (hers and everyone else’s) imprinted on her back.

\--Thor reaches for the hammer and then her hand is warm, but it does not burn, it feels right, it feels like something important has happened, some puzzle piece slid into place--

Thor opens her eyes to the sound of cheering so loud that it almost deafens her. She opens her eyes to Loki’s rarely seen smile. 

It is one of the greatest days of her life. 

v.

Whatever changes, some things are always destined to happen. Decisions so set into stone that not even the Norns with all their eternal wisdom and intimidating power could change them. 

Thor wonders if this is one of those set in stone things; if her brother’s path had been always leading to the roads of tragedy and destruction. Of a mischief that had been twisted into cruel chaos. 

Would Loki have betrayed Asgard (betrayed her) so cruelly if he’d been her natural-born brother and not one claimed? Would he have betrayed them if she’d been less haughty, less arrogant? If for once in her life she’d stopped acting like a damn fool. 

For the first two months after Loki’s fall into the abyss these thoughts are a constant in her head even as she mourns. She cannot help but go over the what ifs, the could have beens because they are all she has left. 

Loki had shattered her trust and he’d shattered her belief as easily as the Bifrost had been broken. 

She knows it’s not entirely her fault, or even half her fault. Yes, she’d been arrogant and foolish, too eager for battle without considering the cost it asked in payment but she’d learned now, thanks to the midgardians--thanks to Jane. She’d changed and somehow Loki had changed too. Gone was the brother she’d once played with, laughed with. Her best friend had been driven mad or he’d been that way all along and he’d fallen into a place she couldn’t follow. 

Sometimes she lies awake and wonders if this would have happened if she had been born a boy. Would she still have been so battle-ready? Or would she have been calm without the constant urge to prove herself. Would she have stormed into Jotunheim or would she have realized how foolish it had been? How naïve to challenge an entire realm with only five warriors at her side. 

Thor blames herself because he’d been her little brother and once she’d her only task had been to watch him, to keep him safe. It didn’t matter that he hadn’t needed her to keep him safe for many years, it didn’t matter that Loki had tricked her, had tried to keep her locked away in the mortal realm--it didn’t matter. 

She’d let her own eagerness to prove herself, to show Asgard that she’d been deserving of glory and of loyalty without doing a thing to deserve it. She’d been trying to prove she was fit to be King by acting like a warlord 

Two months after Loki fell, with her family desperately trying to mourn and unable to because even though Loki was their kin, their loved one he was also a murderer and a traitor and all of Asgard was watching them--she pledged that she’d never make a mistake like that again. No longer would she chase war or death so carelessly, no longer would she be so brash or foolish like some precocious child. 

Being King wasn’t worth losing another person she held dear. 

vi. 

Thor is furious and saddened and trying desperately to control herself, hands tensing up into fists and she is struck by the desire to destroy, to hurt as badly as she herself is feeling. 

“You give up this poisonous dream! You come home!” She says, and she doesn’t care if she’s begging, as if somehow that should shame her, if it meant Loki came home then she’d fallen to her knees right then and there. 

Loki looks at her and for a second she swears she sees something of the brother she once had in his eyes--the next second she is flying, a red blur crashing into her and before she knows it she is thrown into the midst of battle. 

The metal man and the captain take Loki aboard their ship. 

She follows. 

Agent Coulson is there and she somehow ends up talking with him. “In my youth I courted war.” She admits, painfully, shame vibrating in every nerve. She’d been so young, so stupid. She’s learned from her mistakes while her brother has only grown worse. 

They ask her what she is willing to do, they ask her how far she is willing to go. 

Thor doesn’t know.

she doesn’t know and it burns her up inside to think about it. 

In the end it doesn’t matter what she’s prepared to do or not. 

Within the hour, agent Coulson is dead, the ship is destroyed and Loki has escape while she tumbles into a steel cage, beaten and broken of spirit. 

vii. 

Once she’d never hesitated from a fight. She’d gotten into bar brawls as easily as she’d gotten into duels of honor or a fight defending Asgard with her companions. Now she was more cautious, still burned from the frost giants and still she can’t understand why she’s hesitating. 

Loki has caused a war, Loki has endangered a realm she has sworn to protect and Mjolnir has not come to her, for the second time in her life Mjolnir has not answered her call.

Thor wanders through the field searching for it. She is bloody and bruised and each time she looks down at her wounds she thinks about Agent Coulson, thinks about his blood staining the wall.

She’s lost friends before, fellow warriors to the call of battle. She’d mourned them yes, but they had died with honor, they had not been stabbed through the heart by her brother. 

She finds Mjolnir eventually, resting in a small crater and Thor hesitates, staring down at the hammer and tensing her fingers. 

(Whoever holds this hammer)

She doesn’t know if she can kill her brother. She looks at him and she doesn’t remember him falling into the abyss, she doesn’t remember fighting with him on the Bifrost, or even when he’d visited her on Midgard and had seen her falling to pieces, crushed and horribly lonely. 

She looks at him and sees the small boy eager to share every newfound spell he’d learnt with her, every single time she’d been the first he’d shown because all he’d wanted was for her to be impressed by him. (“Thor, look at what I can do! Thor, I just learned how to do this!.)

She looks at him and she sees all her mistakes, she looks at him and her heart is stung with failure. 

(If he be worthy)

Loki is not that same boy anymore. He is a monster, he is broken and cruel and she cannot let innocent people die because of her mistakes or his. 

She’d sworn to Jane once, that she would protect this world. She’d forfeited her life in return for its safety back when it had been the destroyer in that small town. 

(Shall possess the power of)

Thor reaches for Mjolnir and she makes her choice. 

(Thor)

She has a war to win. 

viii.  
They win. 

Midgard is safe and Loki is stopped and they are all alive. 

Somehow it still doesn’t feel like a victory to her. 

In Asgard, it storms for every single day of Loki’s sentencing.

ix. 

It takes her six months to find her way back to Midgard. She had not been actively avoiding it but somehow it still had taken her so long. There was much to fix in both realms and she knows she would have felt out of place in Midgard. Thor is strong but she can admit that she wouldn’t have felt alright being reminded so easily of the destruction her brother had caused. 

The Avengers greet her with opens arm. 

Tony Stark says she has her own room at “Avengers Tower.”

Thor greets them all joyfully because they are the closest things she has to friends here save for Jane, Darcy, and, Erik Selvig. Well, all of them save for the one called Hawkeye. She doesn’t so much as avoid him as treads carefully, knowing of the damage that Loki has caused. 

“How long do you think you’ll be staying?” Tony Stark’s esteemed lady--Pepper, she remembers that her name is Pepper, asks. 

Thor shrugs taking a bite out of their strange human food (it is something called take-out.) It reminds her of a dish from back home but she can’t figure out what specifically. “I do not know, I am here on behalf of Shield and to keep this realm safe.”

She smiles at them, “Officially I am here until my father has need to call me back.” She has enough tact to not mention that the Allfather is worried, that all of Asgard is worried about the ‘friends’ Loki had made after falling into the abyss. 

Pepper smiles back at her warmly. “You’re welcomed here as long as you like.”

The conversation is easy, not as easy if it had been the Warriors three and Sif but then again there is a history between them, centuries of friendship that has cemented them into the closest companions and she has known most of the Avengers for only a few weeks at most. 

A thought occurs to her and she waits politely until Tony is finished eating some of his food before she speaks. “Are we allowed to bring guests here?”

Tony waves a hand carelessly. “Sure, bring whoever you want.” 

Thor grins again. He reminds her of a mix of Fandral and Volstagg. Though she’s sure they’d been offended by the comparison. “I shall tell Jane then, she’ll be pleased.” Thor hasn’t seen Jane in a long time, though they had managed to have a long conversation by phone in the space between the battle ending and before she’d taken Loki back. Jane had sworn her to promise that the next time she is in town on a more “permanent basis” she’ll call her immediately. 

Thor always keeps her promises. 

“Jane?” Natasha says quietly and Thor doesn’t jump but only barely, somehow she’d forgotten that the assassin had even been there. She’s pretty sure it’s the first word Natasha has said all evening though she hadn’t looked bored either, merely content in silence. 

Sometimes she thinks she is afraid of Natasha and not because of the normal reasons people are afraid of her. When she looks at Natasha she is reminded of Loki and his silver-tongue, of how stealthily he could move through the shadows. 

Now, everything reminds her of the things she has lost. 

“Yes, my--how do you say it?” Her mind blanks for a minute, struggling to grasp the foreign word. “I believe you would call it a girlfriend?” She doesn’t really get the term. Sif and Darcy are both friends who are female and yet they are merely friends, not girlfriends. Jane has assured her that it’s merely a cultural difference and she shouldn’t be so worried about it. 

Tony chokes on his chow mein, Hawkeye freezes from where he’d been reaching for an egg roll and the rest of the table is in various phases of processing. 

“Huh.” Bruce says and that is all anyone says before Natasha mentions her latest mission which somehow leads into Bruce mentioning an experiment he’d been working on recently that for some reason makes Tony angry, he starts ranting about wasted potential and then launches into a discussion of terms too complex for Thor to follow. Hawkeye throws pieces of food at them. 

Pepper merely sighs and Thor resolves that she’ll call Jane tonight, something lightening in her chest and she doesn’t realize that she was smiling the rest of the night until she’d looked in the mirror. 

x. 

Jane is there by Friday and the first thing she does is punch Thor on the shoulder, impressively hard for being so tiny and human at that. Tony snickers and Natasha subtly kicks him in the shin with her high-heeled shoes. 

Then Thor is being embraced tightly and for the moment all is right in the world. 

Still her mind is plagued by a repetitive thought and later that night after Jane has fallen asleep, from a mix of a thing called jetlag and plain exhaustion, she sneaks away, being careful to not wake her. 

The Hawk is where she thought he’d be. Shooting a stream of arrows into targets with various degrees of difficulty. She watches for a moment and then decides it’s best to speak up. “You have much skill.” She says quietly and to his credit he doesn’t look startled at all as he turns to face her. 

“Thor.” He greets easily, a carefree smile on his face but she has lived in a world filled with masks and it’s easy to see the cracks in this one; the bags under his eyes, the pale tint of his skin, the haunted gaze. 

Something must show on her face because his face becomes closed off and harsh. “You know you can’t make amends for him, right? You can’t expect some lousy apologize to fix everything he did.”

Thor looks almost offended. “If I thought that a simple apology would make up for what happened then it would be a dishonor to you and all the pain my brother has put you and the people you care about through.” She says, thinking of Natasha and of Agent Coulson. 

Hawkeye still looks uneasy, shoulders tense and staring at her with blank eyes. Finally he sighs, and starts to put his equipment away. “What do you want then?” 

“I want you to not let this break you.” Thor says bluntly and his head snaps up to stare at her, eyes widening for a second. 

“What?”

Thor is the one who looks away this time. “Don’t let him break you, I know I don’t know you personally but I think you are stronger than him.”

He narrows his eyes at her and then barks out a laugh. “You’re really shitty at this, you know that?”

She sighs then. “My brother was always the more charismatic of us, I was more of a leap-first kind of person.” Thor looks at him suddenly with a frown on her face. “It’s probably best that I don’t mention him; Loki is a sore topic for both us.”

“Right, I almost forgot he tried to kill you.” He says with realization.

She hadn’t, even now her side still stings with the phantom pain of Loki’s knife. She wonders how much Loki had told him, if he had told him anything at all. 

Thor realizes with dismay that she can’t fix anything right now. An apology is insufficient and weak-worded on her part and would be an offense to his, she cannot think of a single thing to say that wouldn’t be ‘I’m sorry. My mistakes have caused you pain.’ 

Loki was always better at this. He could talk anyone into anything and had often talked them out of trouble. She wonders what he would have said if he’d been in her position, surely something that could repair the damage done to the Hawk. Once he’d been the one to clean up the devastation she left behind--she was always moving too fast, too dangerous for fragile things in her hast for valor, for glory, for the next adventure. 

It was her turn now. 

“I should get back to Jane.” She says at last and is almost at the door before he speaks up. 

“You know he’s a monster right?” 

Hawkeye looks almost uneasy, she wonders if he thinks she’ll punch him. It’d probably shatter his bones. 

“Yes.” Thor says simply. “But he is my brother.”

“You can’t excuse what he did. He killed a bunch of people, good people.” Hawkeye says firmly, steel in his voice and her mind flashes back to Agent Coulson, blood staining a wall and doing something she couldn’t; he’d stood up to her brother. “He tried to enslave an entire world.”

“I know.” 

Thor closed her eyes suddenly feeling older then she’d ever felt, as he listed off Loki’s crimes. She had a millennia or two on this human, on every person and every living thing on this world and most times she felt so hopelessly young and yet now she could feel every single year bearing down on her. 

“I cannot excuse the things he did and I will not try, but no matter how much I wish it, I cannot forget the past we shared.” 

“Do you want to forget it?” She doesn’t know what this means. There is a barrier between them and she can’t understand if there is some underlying significance to this, if this is a test or merely a human’s curiosity into a supposed god’s pain. 

“More than anything else in all the realms, I wish I could forget the man he used to be.” 

She is tired and Jane waits for her, the comforting presence of someone who cares about her. 

“Why?” The Hawk’s tone is demanding, when he is no right to be, she owes him nothing of her life or Loki’s, but.

But. 

She can’t fix him, he is as damaged as this city as damaged as anything else Loki has touched with his poisonous grasp and he’ll carry that with him for a long time if not the rest of his life. 

She can’t fix any of the damage Loki has done but she can give him whatever answers he needs, now and in the future. It is a pitiful trade but it is all she has. 

She doesn’t have to think about her answer. “Because it would make it easier to hate him.”

Jane wakes up when she crawls back into bed, bone-tired and sluggish. “Where’d you go?” she murmurs only half-awake and Thor gives her a small smile. 

“I was trying to find something.” she replies as she gets comfortable and without a word Jane curls around her, protecting her (the thought should be laughable but it warms her heart.) 

“Hmm? Did you?” Jane says, lips pressing against the column of her throat, the buzz of it making Thor’s skin feel like sparks have run up and down it. 

“Maybe, I think it’s too early to see.” Jane hmms again and soon her breathing becomes lighter and though it takes Thor a great deal while later to sleep for all her tiredness, she does in fact fall asleep. 

There is the feel of a storm in the air, the possibility for change and Thor listens to it, waits for it. This land doesn’t speak to her like Asgard does but it feels similar, it feels like it could be come home. 

It takes her months of awkward stumbling before she really becomes friends with the avengers but eventually they are close and they are a team and Thor is not constantly bombarded by the ghost of Loki. 

She is still homesick from time to time and when that happens she’ll sit up on the roof and stare into the sky until late at night some comes to get her. Usually it’s Clint. 

This world is different. Better in some ways. 

They don’t care that she is a woman, even after Thor explains to the others that she will one day become King of Asgard and what that means and why that's so different, so strange, why Thor has defied Asgard's ancient traditions. 

She tells them Asgard speaks to her and they do not laugh. Bruce even smiles. 

They don’t expect her hair to be long and flowing, they don’t care that she is taller than all of them, or even taller than the warriors three and Sif when they come to visit. They don’t care that Thor is more comfortable in pants then a dress and they don’t care that Jane is there. 

They don’t care that sometimes she is too brash or quick-tempered even when she tries so hard not to be. 

They don’t care that she is the Allfather’s daughter. 

They don’t ask her to prove her worth because she is a woman-warrior, they know she already has it because of her skills. They don’t expect her to get along with Natasha simply because they are both women. 

They never think of her as unworthy. 

It is not perfect. She can see the imperfections all around her--the crime, the hate, the senseless killings. But she’s concluded that every realm no matter how advanced they claim to be is imperfect. Asgard has its own flaws and burdens the same way Midgard does. To say otherwise would be foolish.

Eventually she will have to make a decision. One day she will be forced to confront Loki and the terrible things he has done. She will have to acknowledge that she has messed up and he has messed up and they are not infallible gods but stumbling creatures trying to be impressive.

One day, centuries away, Thor will be King. 

She will be King of Asgard and there will be no regrets and she will be a great king. Not from boasts of glory or a slew of victorious battles. She will not become a king drenched in blood or madness. She will not become a great king by forcing people to bend to her rule the way Loki had. 

Thor will become a great king because she’s earned it, because Asgard is written in her bones, is in the bright of her eyes. 

This is her fate. 

Until then she gladly waits for it.

**Author's Note:**

> I'm not entirely sure why I started writing this. I think it's because I saw fanart of girl!thor and while it was lovely it annoyed me that basically they just kind of changed her into this like cliche thing? 
> 
> Things I wanted to focus on in the fic but couldn't find the placement:
> 
> 1\. The whole King business: Asgard in the film seems like a mix between a viking/norse society (duh) and something a bit medieval, middle ages. So I wondered how girl! Thor would fit into that while struggling to be King. I'm sure some people are wondering what the big deal is. The big deal is that King is a position that holds a great deal of power, especially compared to the "sit pretty and pop out some boy heirs" queen position. I wanted Thor to not want that, I wanted her to want to become more than that. 
> 
> 2\. Hair business: Once again I'm assuming Asgard is a fairly middle ages society so hair was probably pretty important especially if you were royalty. Women would usually have long hair and wouldn't cut it. So the hair issue is important to Thor and having her become more comfortable with herself. 
> 
> 3\. Master Villi is a reference to norse mythology and one of Odin's brothers. 
> 
> 4\. I think that's it. If there's anything you found confusing or didn't like then just comment below and I'll either a) explain or b) apologize for my crappy ideas.


End file.
